新书掠影 A quick glimpse at some new books
从苏联东部前哨楚科塔——一个远得被人们遗忘了的地方开始,萨拉•维勒渐进式地完成了她的极地航行,终点站位于巴伦支海的斯大林“古拉格”所在地。淘金热与修建阿拉斯加石油管道的各种事迹都持续地影响着加拿大原住民因纽特人。
From Chukotka, the forgotten far-eastern outpost of the Russian Federation, Sara Wheeler makes a sporadic but full polar circumnavigation back to the Barents Sea and the site of Stalin’s original gulag. Tales of the gold rush and the building of the Alaskan oil pipeline segue into accounts of the pressures affecting Canada’s native Inuit.
近年中国发生的环境事件中,直接责任方有时被曝光,但为它们提供资金的银行或银团很少被关注。2009年中国银行业放贷9.59万亿元(约合1.4万亿美元),整个行业资产规模从2004年31.4万亿(约合4.6万亿美元)剧增至2010年第一季度的84.2万亿(约合12.3万亿美元)。大规模资金在手,中国银行业可以影响很多项目和企业的环境表现,所以2007年7月中国政府出台了“绿色信贷”政策,促进银行业制定信贷的环境标准。
Those directly responsible for environmental accidents are sometimes exposed – but not so often the funding banks or consortiums. In 2009, Chinese banks made loans worth 9.59 trillion yuan, about US$1.4 trillion. The sector’s total assets leapt from 31.4 trillion yuan (US$4.6 trillion) in 2004 to 84.2 trillion yuan (US$12.3 trillion) in the first quarter of 2010, assets that gave China’s banks the ability to influence the environmental performance of numerous projects and companies.
上世纪70年代初,处在“文化大革命”混乱中的中国仍“以阶级斗争为纲”,认为环境问题只是资本主义制度下的产物,社会主义国家没有环境问题。但时任中国总理的周恩来看到了环境问题的重要性。他派代表团参加1972年在斯德哥尔摩举行的人类环境会议,并指示代表团成员,要了解世界环境状况和各国环境问题对经济社会发展的影响,并以此作为镜子,认识中国的环境问题。
In the early 1970s, a China still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution and class struggle believed that environmental issues were a product of capitalism, and could not occur in a socialist nation. But China’s premier at the time, Zhou Enlai, recognised the importance of the environment. He dispatched a delegation to Stockholm, to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, instructing its members to learn about the state of the global environment and the impact of environmental issues on development in other nations – and to use this knowledge to understand China’s own issues.
在不远的将来,气候变化移民将会成为一个主要问题。从阿拉斯加到马尔代夫,全球变暖已经让人们流离失所。大约2亿多人或许将不得不背井离乡。可是,很多国家却至今没有给予这些为了逃离气候变化的移民难民身份。
Climate-change migration will be a major problem in the near future. From Alaska to the Maldives, people are already being displaced by global warming. Some 200 million people may be forced into exile and as yet countries do not grant refugee status to those fleeing the effects of climate change.
比比·范德奇认为“让外行人积极争论的政治才是最好的政治”,她的新书也在努力成为“让所有人都能参与政治的武器”。您是否对您家附近的新通道及核储备设 施感到愤怒?那么这本“自己动手参与政治”的指南会给您提供非常实际的建议——从组织集会(“在酒吧组织集会往往最成功”)到请愿立法、组织游行、直接采 取行动和进行文化干扰:在公司的空间挑战公司本身(“在阿斯达连锁超市下跪,来表示对鸡的尊敬”)。
Bibi van der Zee thinks “politics is at its best when energetically argued by amateurs”, and her book aims to make “the weapons of campaigning” available to all. Outraged by that new runway or nuclear storage facility planned for your neighbourhood? Then this do-it-yourself guide to campaigning is packed with practical advice – from organising a meeting (“the pub is often the place where most gets done”) to petitioning legislators, planning marches, taking direction action and cultural jamming: challenging corporations in their own space (“kneeling to worship chickens in Asda”, a supermarket chain).
《绿色使者——在华国际环境NGO调查》一书是中国本土NGO“绿家园”调研项目的产出。对于相关领域的研究者和中国本土环保工作者、参与者,它首次向读 者呈现了目前活跃在中国的13家主要环境NGO在华发展的历史,令读者了解到它们如何在推动中国环保发展的同时,也完成了自身的本土化演变。
Green Emissaries, produced by the Chinese NGO Green SOS, is a unique practical handbook for those researching the international NGO sector or those Chinese who work in, or are active in, it. The book gives readers, for the first time, a detailed look inside 13 major environmental organisations working in the country, explaining how they are promoting protection of the environment in China, while also becoming localised.
在短短四十年中,迪拜从荒凉的小渔港变成了一个全球性都市,到处林立着迪拜塔这样如梦似幻的建筑。但赛义德•阿里认为,这个全球性都市非常独特:迪拜是一个“过客的城市”。
Within 40 years, Dubai has been transformed from an obscure regional port into a global city glistening with iconic architecture, such as the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. But, Syed Ali argues, it is a unique kind of global city: “a city of transients”.
1997年俄罗斯在北极点插上国旗,宣布对这片地区及其丰富的油气资源的拥有权。从那开始,这里就吸引了全世界的目光,一场钻探权的竞赛就此展开。在本书里,理查德·塞尔和尤金·波塔波夫对这一地区的历史、居民、野生动植物和地缘政治上的重要性进行了深入的阐释。
When Russia planted a flag at the North Pole in 1997, claiming the territory – and its rich gas and oil resources – the world watched with concern. A race for drilling rights began. Richard Sale and Eugene Potapov examine the history of the region, its inhabitants, wildlife and geopolitical importance.
野生动物学家珍·古道尔集合了一组案例研究,探索各种濒危动物以及拯救他们免受灭绝的方式。以黑足釉、红狼、加州兀鹫为例,这几种动物先前在野外已几乎灭绝,人类通过圈养繁育计划将它们保护起来,然后再将之放归山林。
Field biologist Jane Goodall brings together a clutch of case studies to explore the different types of endangered species and the ways in which each has been rescued from extinction. The black-footed ferret, the red wolf and the California condor, for example, were saved by captive breeding programmes and reintroduced to the wild, where they had previously died out.
对于不懂中文却又想了解中国社会在气候变化问题上的努力的人,《绿色中国》将是一个窗口。哥本哈根气候谈判会议开幕前,英文报纸中国日报将其环境记者和专栏作家的46篇文章选编成书,以中文、英文两种形式在中国出版。
For those who don’t read Chinese but want to learn what Chinese society is doing on the climate-change issue, Evolution of Green China provides a window. This book is a bilingual collection of 46 articles by the English-language China Daily’s environmental journalists and columnists, collected before the opening of the Copenhagen talks in December 2009.
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